Why Writers Should Get Over Pop Music

iStockphoto / dblight

Pop music is the worst thing that could happen to your writing. It’s for dates and bad wedding receptions. Turn it off at once.

Pop is designed to structure your ideas. Stereo hearts in the dark with pumped up kicks. And it works far too well for a writer’s good. As Noel Coward told us, it’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Contemporary classical music, the genius of today’s living composers, will set you free.

Shake out some of the sand that’s in your hair when you come in off the dunes of life. Mess with your best nitties. Line up your finest gritties. You know what we’re doing, don’t you? Well, of course you do. Get them in the right order and others can read what you were thinking. Even feel what you were feeling. These are words. And this is writing. It’s what we do.

But why not engage an even higher alchemy?

Living composers, gorgeous and serious creatures with racing-quick wits—not old dead white guys in breeches—arrive dusted in the same nuggets of concept and emotion we writers wear. Same world as ours, after all. But they super-heat what sticks to them into a new substance.

High-silica content: composers’ material moves through time. And this is your hours’ glass.

Contemporary classical music wraps your efforts to fuse thought and emotion in a see-through composite. Clear aesthetic possibility. As your words rush through that glassy focused space-space they create with their music, you may or may not share a single concept with your composer. Doesn’t matter. The transparency of her or his medium opens windows in your work, shifting your sands with new breezes of sonic intelligence.

Three samples for writerly tasks

Brainstorming: “TransAmerica” is about rapid mind movement with pushy percussion, full of knockabout switchbacks. Todd Reynolds is one of our most accomplished digital violinists. He tours internationally in performance of his own work and that of composer-colleagues. Here’s more about the guy many of us know on Twitter as “DigiFiddler,” who also founded one of New York’s most acclaimed amped string quartets, Ethel. Click here to listen if you don’t see the slider below; go to the 2nd slider on the page. (Audio from Q2 Music.)

Crafting: “Oceanic Verses” starts very quietly and searches the horizon, tentative and patient. Composer Paola Prestini is a wonder. The calls of her strings remind me of the great Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou’s lonely siren echoes. And Prestini loves writers: “Literature has played a huge role in my writing and it has always been my first collaborator; I love painting music on literary canvases; ideas on the page invite me to play and to think.” Click here to listen if you don’t see the slider below. (Audio from Q2 Music.)

Revising: “Everything Is an Onion” is careful, purposeful, measured, dutiful. Yeah, like peeling it. You undo one edit and look what happens to three other phrases in the same chapter, right? Timo Andres works his keyboard, as you do yours, with personable intensity. It’s what caused critic Alex Ross to call “Shy and Mighty,” Andres’ debut recording, “more mighty than shy.” And as your revisions stretch out into something past a natural lifespan (don’t they always?), it’s comforting to know that this piece is from a lengthier work titled “It Takes a Long Time To Be a Good Composer.” Click here to listen if you don’t see the slider below; go to the 2nd slider on the page. (Audio from Q2 Music.)

Stump the Porter

Make a deal with you. Turn off that Beyoncé before your ears glaze over, and tell me in a comment below what sort of scene or situation or mess you’ve written yourself into. I’ll get back to you with a suggestion of a living composer whose work may just help you hear your way around the next corner in your manuscript.

And tell me what you think: is there a time and place for pop in serious writing? What’s your favorite music for various writing tasks? How do you use music in conjunction with your writing? Or do you use it at all? If not, what’s the matter with you?

Porter Anderson—whose Writing on the Ether appears here at JaneFriedman.com on Thursdays—has issued a matching grant to Q2 Music listeners who donate during the autumn pledge drive through October 26. You do NOT have to pledge a penny. This is not a pitch. Porter’s much more interested in bringing together new music with new writings. If you do feel interested in contributing to the work of this unique NPR affiliate (an online streaming service of WNYC/WQXR in New York), each $1 you donate will be matched with $1 from Porter, up to a total of $5,000, at Q2Music.org. And Porter would love to thank you. Drop him a line on Twitter.

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ClaudiaC

This is a very fun idea. I’d love some help with a book where I can’t get the story to line up. You know what I mean, it’s growing like a tomato vine with little fruit. I wake up in the middle of the night and realize I have a lot of vine and few flowers.  I think the problem is discernment. Any help there?

And, I have to say there is also a lot that can be learned from some Pop music. Max Martin, for example, is the author of a lot of pop songs. I’ve learned a lot from watching/studying his music. Why do his songs evoke such powerful emotions? The song usually turns on one or two words. Since I write serial fiction, this is a powerful lesson on how to make a piece pop.

Further, there are people who craft songs. Some of the best flash fiction authors are song writers. Nora Jones’s ‘Man of the Hour’ has very few words and yet tells an entire story. Randy Newman’s “Think it’s going to rain today’ is a haunting story of only 101 words and yet evokes an entire world. That’s not to mention any of the one offs by Willie Nelson or other well crafted songs. Heck, my serial, Denver Cereal, started from a retelling of ‘Friends in Low Places’. To my mind, there’s a lot to be learned from studying the craft of powerful, word thrifty storytelling from songs – and particularly pop songs. 

Writing is a craft of taking human experience and emotion and translating it to words. I personally think there’s a lot to be learned from pop songs. 

Porter Anderson

Hey, some great thoughts here! To start with your “vine and few flowers” (great phrase, difficult problem), you might look into some of the fine work of a composer named Peter Broderick – his Music for Falling From Trees, in particular, develops a kind of rich filigree of sound without cutting short original themes. It’s an album-length suite, too, which gives you a tremendous range and sense of space to work with.

I do hear you on the talent of many pop artists. I’m impressed with your example of Max Martin — cool point about serial fiction. I think where the question of song craft (you defend it well) comes up for me, though, is that unless you are specifically working a scene or section of material that perfectly maches a song, it’s not as useful as what (to my ears) is the more expansive possibility of most contempo-classical work. And the danger for me, in working with a precisely targeted (emotionally) song, such as Newman’s “Rain” is that you start (well, I do) start writing for those “scarecrows dressed in the latest styles.”

Know what I mean? I’m back to my first point, really — and taking nothing from your good survey of songwriting — that such pieces are meant to “craft,” as it were, a specific mood and response from you, meaning you’re not quite your own writer as you work on your own “tomato vines.”

Make sense? Or am I simply raving? lol

I have to tell you, there’s a breast-cancer fund-raising event going on just across the channel from me where I live. Super cause, of course, and pink everywhere … and they’re playing “YMCA” at piercing volume.  The ironies just never stop, do they? 🙂

ClaudiaC

I’ve had the very experience you describe. It’s embarrassing to say, but I had ‘Elevator Love Song’ on my Pandora while I was writing. I named a character ‘the rich girl’ then had to defend the use ‘rich girl’ vs an actual name for years. So yes, you’re right – lesson learned (I hope!).

Thanks for the suggestion of Peter Broderick. I’ll check it out and report back! 🙂

Yes, YMCA is an excellent example of your point. And I do love ‘scarecrows dressed in latest styles’. It may have to be the title of a serial or a book I love it so much. 😉

Added: Sorry, I guess I wasn’t done. One challenge to your “such pieces are meant to “craft,” as it were, a specific mood and response from you.” Many, many composers write to evoke specific emotion – some for their own good, and other for the effect of others. Mozart, for example, wrote to ease his tremendous anxiety and thus his music relieves anxiety. Depressed composers often write upbeat music. Just like JK Rowlings put her grief for losing her mother in the Harry Potter books, composers put their emotions into their work as well. Thus simply choosing music without words doesn’t mean your emotions are not being manipulated by the person creating/writing the music itself. Just a thought.

Porter Anderson

Hey, Claudia, just getting back to your last post, you’re right, of course, that lyrics aren’t the only thing that can create a guiding context for a composition emotionally (or intellectually). I think what I’m saying, however, is that popular music, say a standard piece, three minutes long with a single, repeating hook — maybe “I love you just the way you are” — hardly has the potential range of aesthetic interpretation that something like a 20-minute piece from Rautavaara will have. For all the anxiety that may have informed some of Mozart’s work, the very same piece of his may be called both sad and happy by two different people. The range in that is the same scope that allowed Stanley Kubrick to do something with the overture to Rossini’s Thieving Magpie in A Clockwork Orange that in no way reflected what normally is done with it.  That’s range. Personally, I rarely find minor keys “sad,” while many people will say they are. I also can hear the irony in various ostensibly “upbeat” works, as I’m sure you can, a whole dimension of possible interp that the next guy may not get at all. Meaning that — in general, and with exceptions, of course — much of classical music, and particularly contemporary classical, for me offers a far, far broader range of potential meaning and texture and creative interaction than does the typical (again, with exceptions) pop ditty that latches onto one sentiment and gnaws it to pieces for four minutes as a dog does a bone. Something well known, say Barber’s Adagio for Strings — strikes most people as negative in one way or another, full of sadness. But sadness about what? Sky’s the limit. There’s nothing there to tell you that you must feel sad and about what. In contrast, “Born in the USA” doesn’t offer a trace of wiggle room about how we’re supposed to feel when we hear it, not a scrap of space to find your own soul in the room when that thing is fist-pumping you to pieces. It’s not really the question of lyrics vs. instrumental. It’s the question of available context and response. And I really appreciate the range of interpretation that classical music allows me, especially contemporary classical, over the Black&Decker drill-it-home here’s-how-you’re-supposed-to-feel-now directives of pop. 🙂

** This comment was written listening to Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind on @Q2Music:twitter 

ClaudiaC

*nodding* I agree that many forms of classical music allow the user to bring their own experience, dance around with it, and set it down. 

What I think we’re both agreeing that an author needs to take responsibility for the environment s/he is writing within. Many of your commenters have said they listen to this or that while they write this or that. Our stories depend on us to take this level of responsibility. 

I also love the support of new music in all it’s forms. A lot of new music gets created/sucked up by the movie industry where it’s used to create emotion in the viewer (LOTR, or even Vangelis in Blade Runner.) Music speaks to our souls and the progression of a culture. We all need to support it’s development and the ‘channelers’ who are able to create it.

Thanks for the opportunity to hash through a clearly fascinating topic! 🙂

PS. That’s some music-fu. Peter Broderick is lovely – thank you! 🙂

Porter Anderson

Glad you like Peter’s work. His 5th movement in Trees is my favorite, the “Awaken” movement. And yeah, the responsibility is the key. We all hold it and need to handle it well. Great chatting with you, Claudia, thanks for so much grand input!

**This comment written while listening to @MissyMazzoli:twitter ‘s Song From the Uproar, so cool, on @Q2Music:twitter — all about the 19th century explorer Isabelle Eberhardt http://ow.ly/76dsS , amazing true story of a woman-explorer, my favorite of Missy’s works.

Veronica

I don’t suppose there’s a music to help someone who’s started 13 stories and/or books, but hasn’t really finished even one?

I listen to music a lot, but not usually while I’m writing. I am a dancer every bit as much as I am a writer. Or at least I used to be. If I listen to music, the dancer in me wants to come out and start choreographing, or worse yet, just dancing around aimlessly. Then nothing gets written, and since there’s not much space in my writing spaces, things also get knocked down. And sometimes I hurt myself. 

As far as pop music, I love it. I would never write with it on…but it’s great for driving, checking facebook, or folding laundry.

Porter Anderson

Perfect uses of your pop music, Veronica, lol, I’ll concede that it’s laundry-folding stuff, hands down. 🙂

For your writing interests, I’m going to send you to my favorite source, the mighty Q2 Music contemporary-classical stream provided by NPR affiliate WQXR in New York. On this page of their site http://www.wqxr.org/#/articles/q2-live-concerts/2011/aug/23/live-temple-dendur/  you’ll find a remarkable concert, which was streamed live to the world on September 11 from the ancient Egyptian Templer of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I want you to scroll down to the last audio “slider” on the page, under the title
The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski (arr. Maxim Moston). This is a remarkable piece that was developed not about the 9/11 attacks at all, but about the actual disintegration of recording tape that the composer, Bill Basinski, was trying to digitize to preserve the music on it. The attacks occurred as he finished this work. What’s wonderful about it — and maybe helpful for you — is that it is, indeed, loops, as his title implies, and in Maxim Moston’s new arrangement, there’s a superb persistence in the work.

It’s too slow for you to do much choreography to, you’ll die in an arabesque on this stuff, don’t try it. And that’s part of the point. Get into your chair, get ready to finish one of your books, and let Basinkski just keep returning you and returning you and returning you to the task at hand in one of the most intriguing, oddly catchy serious pieces I’ve heard all season.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Jamesmb113

Thank you so much for your suggestions, and for your kind words.

I started with “Hymn” from “Sinking of the Titanic”.  It truly reached into obscure corners of my mind, my heart and my experience.  Part benediction, part reassuring pat on the back from an old friend, part – something that’s harder to describe.  Something akin to “It’s ok to grieve that now.”

A small part of me wants to rush into “Jesus’ Blood”, but I think I’d rather just sit here quietly, and let “Hymn” settle in a bit.

Thank you, sir.  You’re truly a musical matchmaker.

Porter Anderson

James, I’m delighted to hear that Gavin’s work is reaching you so easily, although not surprised. If there’s any magic at all, it belongs to him and these other composers whose work I’ve come to love so much in close proximity to my own. With luck, you’ll find more and more of Gavins’ and others’ work speaking to you. But if you go no farther than him, you’ll have walked into a cathedral’s worth of fabulous sound and thought and feeling. He’s an intensely intelligent composer whose every note is where it is for a reason. A grand model for writers. All the best, then, and thanks for letting me know the suggestion held some use for you, that makes me feel great! 🙂  Keep me posted on how things go, I’m always near at @Porter_Anderson:twitter on Twitter and I”m here as @JaneFriedman:twitter ‘s lucky guest each Thursday with my “Writing on the Ether” column about publishing and writing. Do drop in! 🙂

Rich Weatherly

Thank you for sharing. I couldn’t agree more. The realm of classical music, from baroque to contemporary offers a rich assortment of inspiration. I use it for inspiration and in many instances to guide pacing. 

Porter Anderson

Hear, hear, Rich! That range you’re talking about is the ticket. As I was saying to Claudia earlier, there’s actually little question of talent in the pop world (i.e. Max Martin, whom she mentions, Newman, et al, today’s Adele, etc.). The real question for writers — and easy for none of us — is to stay open to what we need. For my own creativity, the contemporary-classical span works best, while I can “hear what they hear” in both older classical work and current pop trends. Bravo for recognizing that range is the issue. Gives you access to everything you need. Stay open to it all! Thanks for commenting –

Cyndi Pauwels

I never write with music that has lyrics, it silences my words and I’m stuck with the song running through my head for days. Some classical/non-vocal music works, but mostly I prefer silence.

Porter Anderson

And it’s the silence that would drive ME mad, lol. We’re all so different in how we write.  Yep on lyrics, though. I do find a great deal of contemporary choral work — Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre and Nico Muhly and even Lisa Bielawa — can be fantastic for my writerly efforts, but the lyrics of choral are in most cases used far more as orchestral elements than lead vocals in pop are, of course. But then, there’s my guy Corey Dargel, fully contempo-classical and all lyrics. Terrific composer…never try to write to him. 🙂  Thanks for reading and commenting, Cyndi –

Jamie Clarke Chavez

Porter, I love this post, love the idea, love your writing, love the way you think about things in completely new ways. Nice post. 

Porter Anderson

Jamie, I’ll either have to marry you or hire you as my publicity director. 🙂  Thanks, seriously, for such kind words … music to anybody’s ears. 🙂

Roz Morris fiction

Love this post. I use music in so many ways. Classical, as you say, to open the windows and whirl up the emotions that as yet have no words. But I invent too readily and often too fast to keep control. Sometimes I need a simple piece of strutting pop to capture a moment, put a net over it and let me examine it.

Anyway, I have story problem that needs the classical kind of exploration. What do you prescribe to interrogate the possibilities of a returning ghost? 

Porter Anderson

Well, YOU took this topic on earlier with me, Roz, in this post that gave us your great phrase, an “undercover soundtrack” for the way writers can think of their collaborative relationship with music. http://ow.ly/75GIh  Great job there (and thank you for giving me a chance to talk about one of our best composers of the moment, Caleb Burhans (@Pluckbro:disqus ). 

I DO get what you mean when you say that you sometimes need “a simple piece of strutting pop” to snag what you’re doing. Something like Pēteris Vasks’ amazing “Botschaft” (means Embassy, or, less formally, Messages) can pretty much take me right on out the door of my imagination with his screaming strings and duo-pianists hurling handfuls of chords at each other — easily one of the most combative, disturbing, and yet exhilarating works I know. At times when those “windows” get opened too widely, I can get wanting something more simplistic to narrow the view again. 🙂

And, wow, the returning ghost situation sounds fantastic. Tell me this — is this a happy return or negative? In other words, are we talking about a sort of sweet revisitation by a beloved spirit? Or something terrifying and dreadful? 

If the former, you might look to the work of John Luther Adams (not to be confused with John Adams), whose icy-Alaska vistas are gorgeous with celesta and delicate frost-memory beauty, massive expanses of lovely, eerie tundra. Try, for example, JLA’s “In a Treeless Place, Only Snow,” gorgeous. You can hear a live performance of it on this page at @Q2Music:disqus — http://ow.ly/75Hqt (last audio slider on the page — and notice that his “The Farthest Place” is in this same group of audio files, three above that one, also great.  

Then if you’re having a horrific ghostly time of it? Ha! John Corigliano (who, incidentally, is the composer of “The Red Violin” film score and a gorgeous concerto built on it).  You want John’s amazing “Hallucinations.” Scare your life out. Here’s a page at @Q2Music:twitter with that one, a live performance from (Le) Poisson Rouge, in a fabulous arrangement by Ricardo Romaneiro, it’s the first of the two sliders on this page: http://ow.ly/75Hxa   

Careful with that last one. Your sanity will be going over the edge of your desk like a Dali watch before it’s over. 🙂

Roz Morris fiction

Happy, negative, disturbing, exhilarating. eerie, massive? All of the above. Can’t wait to get started.

Porter Anderson

Wow. One multi-talented ghost from the sound of it. Well, you’re in luck because the concert just finished tonight in New York with the American Composers Orchestra had six new works on it (two world premieres, four NY premieres) and was a knockout for just that cluster of terms you’re using there. I think that with the single exception of the Ruby Fulton piece (hers was based in cowboy lore, almost a contemporary Ferde Grofe treatment), the other five each will have something to offer you and the whole show should be on-demand on the @Q2Music:twitter  site tomorrow, Sunday, at some point, on this page http://ow.ly/75QnF — good listening to come. 🙂

Jessica

Do soundtracks count? I love the music from The Piano, The Book of Eli, and How to Train Your Dragon. Very uplifting and soul reaching for me. Any suggestions?

Eeleen Lee

Craig Armstrong “As If To Nothing” is a great collection of his orchestral pieces.
Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to “The Mission” (1986)
John Barry “Dances With Wolves”
Hans Zimmer “The Wings of A Film” live performances of his compositions for “Gladiator”, “Thelma and Louise” et al.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence” and “The Last Emperor”
Vangelis “Chariots of Fire”, “Blade Runner”

ClaudiaC

I listen to a piano music stream at Pandora and select the upbeat music. Have you tried creating a ‘The Piano’ stream? I bet the others would come up.

Eeleen Lee

Music helps to set the tone for writing but it is ultimately a matter of taste, mood and preference. Sometimes you may prefer complete silence, classical music or even Nine Inch Nails in your ear (the industrial rock band)  Agree with ClaudiaC about pop music. I wouldn’t dismiss all pop as being simplistic and only fit to soundtrack major life events (Unless wedding bands play Philip Glass at wedding receptions?) 

Porter Anderson

Jessica, Eeleen, and Claudia, my movie muskateers here, excellent comments! 

Eeleen, so glad you know Armstrong (Quiet American) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (Sheltering Sky), two of my favorites, along with the great, great Hans Zimmer, of course. All your suggestions are quite astute. 

May I add a couple to consider? 

@NicoMuhly:disqus  –  his score for The Reader is very fine, and he’s one of my all-time favorite composers. Watch for his new opera (with Craig Lucas), coming to the Met in the 2013 season. It’s called Two Boys, and it’s fantastic, saw its world premiere in London.

John Powell – his trilogy of soundtracks for the Bourne films. When I interviewed him on this work for CNN, he was really fascinating in telling me how in the most hair-raising sequences of action for Matt Damon, he pulls back, over and over, in volume, orchestration, tempo, percussive elaboration, because some of the high-tension scenes in the film are so long that you simply can’t score them full-tilt all the way through. He’s an amazing colorist for instrumentation, too. The very first theme in the opening film, which becomes Jason Bourne’s motif, originally had a guitar carry that lonely lead. They discovered when they mixed in the sound of rain on the sea (in which Bourne is found floating and almost dead) was too loud for the guitar. So he switched it to a bassoon on that melody line, and it’s a marvelous lesson in what such brilliant composers can do to actually jack up the emotional effect when given the kind of chance that film editing might offer. That bassoon’s moan is unforgettable.

Abel Korzeniowski – this is the Polish-born composer whose work really got to Americans first in A Single Man for Colin Firth. Abel has several fine albums of work out in addition to that soundtrack, which is full of grand tone-poetry for writers. The only problem is that I wish in so many cases of his work that his individual pieces ran longer and developed more deeply. Part of the problem of soundtracks, of course — Hollywood needs three minutes, not thirty. 🙂

Eeleen, I’m going to leave Nine Inch Nails in your ear, not mine, LOL. But just to clarify, I’m not as interested in dismissing all pop as in asking writers to consider listening beyond their comfort level. You clearly know what we’re talking about. And, God help us, we may yet hear Glass’ Days and Nights in Rocinha get past Bolero in popular consciousness if the masses ever hear it — please not at weddings. 🙂  What I’m really hoping to do is get more folks just like you and Claudia and Jessica busy alerting other writers to these far more ranging possibilities. 

And this is why I love and recommend @Q2Music:disqus as a nonstop, 24-hour, free source of unutterably beautiful “living music” by living composers. Unless you’re in Manhattan or Brooklyn and spending every night at The Greene Space or Symphony Space or Merkin Concert Hall, etc., it’s actually very hard to come by this work. HEY. Live concert tonight on Q2, too, with Bryce Dessner of The Natioanl (crossover in the extreme) doing the world premiere of his double guitar concerto with his twin brother Aaron. Free, 7p, with a live chat, too. Check it out: http://ow.ly/75I19 

Jill Barville

Hah!  Your lead made me laugh.  The obvious retort is that only someone “old” would disparage pop music, the way Beethoven was disparaged in his day.  But when I played the first track you posted, my teenage drummer heard it and pronounced it “cool”.
 
This is an interesting throw down and I hope it sparks much debate because I’m glad writers like and listen to different genres of music. If we all felt the same, about music or about anything, the world would be so boring and so would the books.  
 
For me, it has more to do with how my writing life uses the muses of the everyday.  And how it departs and becomes something new.  My world is a noisy one, filled with the cacophony of competing voices and with live music that ranges from classical piano and choral to head-banging drums.  It comes from having teen musicians in the house.  Naturally, pop music permeates the minivan as I shuttle them to and fro.  When you can understand the words, I can sing those songs by heart, so they are easy to tune out.  
 
I do write with a pop and conversation background at the coffee shop during my daughter’s rehearsals, but it’s an act of efficiency that beats spending more time driving to and fro.  Writers must learn to make do.  Still, I prefer the sound of silence to write. That’s when I can best hear the melody of an article or story rise above the ideas.  And it’s a rare luxury. 

Perhaps when they’re grown and gone I’ll find the need to fill the silence and begin searching for perfect background music. 

Porter Anderson

You’re right on the money, Jill, it’s the diversity of all our creative heads and what we hear when we work that counts! 

Love that you could get the “coolness” of the @Digifiddler:disqus piece, too — Todd is anything but stodgy, and so am I , for that matter … I was interviewing everybody from Sting to the Thompson Twins, Belinda Carlisle of the GoGos, and lots of folks as a features journalist for years. 

In fact, if you can get hold of one of the kids’ best pairs of headphones tonight at 7pET / 4pPT, check out this live concert that @Q2Music:disqus will stream from New York’s Winter Garden. It’s Bryce Dessner of the band The National doing the world premiere of his double guitar concerto with his twin brother Aaron. Five more premieres on the bill, too, and with a live chat to jump into, too, if you like. Check it out: http://ow.ly/75I19 — that’s the online contemporary-classical stream of WQXR, sanity on the ether. 🙂

Nancy Smith

I like writing to jazz. A little John Coltrane goes a long way for creative inspiration, in my book. Radiohead has the same effect, although the scenes look slightly different. 
But I’ve also used Metallica, when I have to write a particularly violent or angry scene. Keeping my pulse going seems to churn it out.

Porter Anderson

Totally cool that you’ve mentioned jazz, Nancy. Me, too. I love Eldar (who is anything but eldEr, he’s only about 25, maybe younger), and you know who I got back into lately is Jon Hassell. His best piece? Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street. I mean, can you beat that? Gorgeous, intoxicating, long, languid cuts, a remarkable artist and his ensemble is amazing, do check it out. Preview it here, it’s the title of the album, too, and it’s the fourth track. http://ow.ly/75Igw Thanks for commenting!  
** This comment was written while listening to Alexina Louie’s Music for Piano on @Q2Music:disqus   (classy, huh? I should add that to all these comments)